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Dredd Review

Wow! I was absolutely amazed by Dredd. This film did so many things right and it did them well. The action, the story, the visuals were all just dead on. Dredd uses 3D and slow motion in a way that makes sense and that really adds to the cinema experience. I am writing this with the hopes that I can talk all of you into going to see this film, because it so deserves to have sequels made. If you like action films at all and you can handle some solid gore, then you must go see Dredd.

The first thing that this film does that is simultaneously amazing and ridiculous that it actually works, is that Dredd is the main character and he has zero character growth. Dredd is Dredd from frame one to frame murder/death/kill. He is an unstoppable, unwavering force of nature who knows exactly who he is and why he does what he does. This gives him an aura of invincibility that adds to his presence every time that he is on the screen. Dredd lives in a near future where nuclear war has destroyed the planet and civilization as we know it. The only “law” are Judges who serve as judge, jury and executioner and has all of the rights to pass sentence and execute the convicted on site.

Karl Urban plays him as invincible and totally committed to the law and deserves so much praise for pulling it all off without ever seeing his face. Dredd never takes his helmet off once during the film. Our main character is faceless and has no character development and I loved him for it. I love a film that has so much faith in its character that we don’t need to learn any back story, or how they became the person that they are. We get to inhabit that character and simply experience their existence.

This is counterbalanced with Anderson, played by Olivia Thirlby. This day is her final test to become a judge. Dredd gets to decide her fate. So her first entrance into the real world of judging comes at the hands of a fanatic of the system. In essence, the film Dredd is the origin story of Anderson and how this first day changes her. The added twist is that Anderson lived very close to the boarder walling off the city from the nuclear radiation. As a result, she has developed telepathic abilities from being exposed to said radiation. This leads to some incredible “mind’s eye” scenes which take full advantage of impossibility and create some beautiful (and disturbing) scenes.

This is not the only devise that Director Pete Travis uses to make beautiful scenes. The combination of filming Dredd in 3D and having the drug lord produce a drug called slo-mo is epic! Slo-mo slows down your perception to 1% of real time. Meaning that things that take 1 minute would feel like they are taking 100 minutes. One of the most beautiful uses of this is water in a bath tub. This scene of splashing took about 2-3 minutes to watch and it was riveting. Let me repeat that. 2-3 minutes of water being splashed in a bath tub was MIND BLOWING!

Then this effect was used during drug raids and other scenes, where it made total sense that people would be using drugs, to let us watch super slow motion images of bullets entering and exiting every part of the body imaginable. It was an effect that allowed scenes to take the shape of comic book panels. I recently found out that Dredd is a long running comic book series, and seeing frozen panels in the moving scene that I was witnessing was just incredible.

Dredd is so damn good! If you have ever enjoyed action movies, than I can guarantee you will enjoy this one. Dredd is an R rated film and it most definitely earns that rating with the level of violence and gore that it dishes out. If you can handle your heads exploding, then you must see this incredible action film. Go see Dredd (in 3D on the big screen)!

Have you seen Dredd? What did you think of it? Let us know in the comments below.